After the usual, civil formalities are finished
and the formal photographer has gone,
you begin to photograph people not poses;
charming, as you mingle; capturing, like a magus,
the very spirit of each and every guest.

In fifty years, we have been seldom apart.
When we are you are my very limb
and life. I was alone in Illinois,
driving, by the side of the Mississippi,
on the Great River Road, south to St. Louis –
thinking of you every lonely yard of the way.

Marriage, love, last, of course, by chance, choice.
I watch you ‘work the room’ – enchanting,
diffident, vital, a benison.